The race started steadily with nobody willing to start the work on the front, and taking advantage of this, 2 riders soon made an early move and went up the road, Scott Easter (Felt-Colbornes) and Charles Coleman (Cadence-Cannondale) quickly gained a sizeable gap, and once they were joined by a third rider from NFTO Racing they pushed hard to pull out over a minute on the bunch. Rob countered this move by jumping away with a couple of guys, and I moved across to him soon after, we didn't stay out for long but it signalled early, our intent for the race.
Early chase group containing both Rob and I.
The next couple of laps passed without much entertainment, but the bunch were so un-interested that the break had pulled out a gap to 2 minutes, Rob and I were both trying our luck off the front, but none of the strong riders wanted to come out to play. With just over 2 laps to go, the break had pushed the gap up to 2 and a half minutes, and I started to worry so I rolled back to the bunch and grabbed Matt and John who started working with me on the front to bring down the gap, little did we know Rob had just jumped off the front with 2 others... whoops, we brought back our own team-mate, sorry Rob! The gap came down to 2 minutes, and when 2 riders drifted off the front, I bridged across on the finish hill and we got a gap on the bunch.
Bridging the gap
We were soon joined by a couple of other riders, forming a strong 5-man break and as we started working smoothly together, we got a time gap of 1m50s, then 1m20s, then 50s and by the time we went up the finish hill for the penultimate time, there was just one rider left up the road at 20 seconds.
Penultimate lap
We caught the final rider, Scott Easter with 8 miles to go and he joined our group. The 6 of us continued to chaingang for another 4 miles before Daniel Davies (Wallis CHH RT) and I attacked the group with 4 miles to go... This was a futile attack as we couldn't gain a big enough gap. By this time we had over a minute on the peloton, and it was clear that people were thinking about the finish by missing turns on the front. Davies went on the attack again with 2 miles to go, pulling out a decent gap, and he held it to the bottom of the hill, but couldn't maintain it to the finish. Karl Hine (Cadence Cannondale) made his move with 500m to go by passing everyone on the outside, I stayed on his wheel as we surged ahead of our breakaway companions.
I bided my time until 100m to go, when I attacked Karl on the right hand-side and pulled out a good few bike lengths to cross the line first and take the win! My first Road Race win of the year, and I was over the moon!
Rob had to settle for around 15th after riding a very strong race, Matt paid the price of not drinking with bad cramps and had to pull out, and John finished in the main bunch.
Presentation with Team Sky Neo-Pro Luke Rowe
Video Highlights - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4aOtB8xuEM
It felt fantastic to take the win in a tough race on a fantastic course, my first ever win in a road race on the open roads, and yet another win for Dream Cycling. I've now got about 60 points and I'm moving in the right direction in terms of tactics, strength, and points towards my 1st category licence! Now looking forward to getting more out of my good form at the moment when I head to Portsmouth on Wednesday!
Ciao!
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